With the current vogue for all things Celtic, you'd think there would be a lot of interest in Celtic
history, culture and costuming. But, as a remark
passed along by a friend states, "There are not a
lot of people interested in Irish history. There are a
lot of people interested in painting themselves blue and
pretending to be from Tir na n'Og." Hopefully,
since you're here looking at my page, you're interested
in doing things correctly. And I'm trying to
provide a little guidance, and tell you what is and isn't
known on the subject without making stuff up out of thin
air.

Ok, now...
When you watch a Hollywood film about medieval or
pre-modern Europe, chances are the people are clothed in
drab clothes, crudely woven and sewn.

Actually, textiles in ancient times were fairly
advanced. It doesn't make any sense that a culture with
the fine metalworking techniques seen in torques and
other surviving artifacts would be running around in rags
and tatters, yet this is the common perception of what
people wore.

Weaving is a very basic technology and was quite
advanced as early as 5,000 BCE, and brightly colored dyes
were readily available. If we met our Celtic ancestors,
they would probably look as gaudy to us as they did to
the Romans, since they were very fond of bright colors
and ornamentation.

There aren't a lot of textile remains found for Celtic
clothing from prehistoric times through the 16th century;
we mostly have to rely on manuscripts and descriptions of
what was worn at various times. However, I will make some
educated guesses based on textile construction techniques
from the few Celtic finds available, as well as evidence
from the bog finds in Denmark, which could arguably be
either Celtic or Teutonic. Obviously, fashions varied
from place to place and time to time, so Celtic clothing
wasn't universally the same in all places over the
thousand or so years I'm spanning; however, similar
techniques of constructing and decorating clothing were
used throughout Europe, and results can be inferred from
these. Clothing in the Iron Age certainly varied from
tribe to tribe; one tribe may have favored baggy trews,
while another tribe liked them skin-tight. What I hope to
do here is to provide a framework based on what we do
know, in order to have at least a solid starting point
for further exploration.

The Scottish segment starts with the early middle
ages, and, I hope, refutes a few of the myths in
circulation about Scottish costume that are currently in
circulation. I will be expanding on this segment over
time.

My apologies to the Welsh side of Celtic culture. My
primary interests are pre-historic and classical Celtic
culture, and Gaelic (Irish and Scottish) medieval Celtic
culture. A few Welsh costume links are in my list of other web resources.

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